Category: Biodiversity

Finally … and so blindingly obvious to those not blinded by the AGW propaganda.

The main driver of wildlife extinction is not climate change, but humanity’s harvesting of species and our ever-expanding agricultural footprint.

This is according to a new study of nearly 9,000 ‘threatened’ or ‘near-threatened’ species.

While scientists acknowledge climate change is a threat, they found that three-quarters are being over-exploited for commerce, recreation or subsistence.

Demand for meat and body parts, for example, have driven the Western gorilla and Chinese pangolin to near extinction, and pushed the Sumatran rhinoceros – prized in China for bogus medicines made from its horn – over the edge.

And more than half of the 8,688 species of animals and plants evaluated are suffering due to the conversion of their natural habitats into industrial farms and plantations, mainly to raise livestock and grow commodity crops for fuel or food.

By comparison, only 19 per cent of these species are currently affected by climate change, they reported in a study published in the peer-reviewed journal Nature.

Conservation budgets, the researchers argued, must reflect this reality.

And then some of the usual BS

‘There is no need to see tradeoffs among different conservation priorities – we need them all,’ Peter MacIntyre, an expert on the ecology of fresh-water systems at the University of Wisconsin, told AFP.